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Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War!
Israel’s Sharon triumphs: now what?
Ariel Sharon, leader of the Likud party, waves to his supporters as Likud
Parliament members applaud him early Wednesday morning after polls pointed to
his strong victory over Ehud Barak.
JERUSALEM, Feb. 7 — Right-wing hawk Ariel Sharon proclaimed “a new
path” for Israel on Wednesday after crushing the liberal Prime Minister Ehud
Barak in Tuesday’s election. Sharon, a former general noted for his hard-line
stance on Palestinians, won a staggering 62 percent of the vote in an Israel
grown weary after five months of Israeli-Palestinian clashes. In Sharon’s
promise to the Israeli public of “a different kind of peace process,” some
saw hope for unity, while others saw only the potential for even greater
conflict.
“THE STATE OF ISRAEL has entered a new path ... the path of security
and true peace,” the 72-year-old Sharon told cheering, chanting supporters at
his campaign headquarters early Wednesday. He called on Palestinians to
abandon “the way of violence” and urged his vanquished opponent, Barak, to
join forces with him in a broad-based national government.
Sharon, 72, also said U.S. President George W. Bush had called to
congratulate him and to urge close cooperation. Later he said that he’d also
received a call from Secretary of State Colin Powell and that Powell and the
U.S. president had said they would help continue peace process.
With 99 percent of the vote counted, Sharon had 62.5 percent of the
vote to Barak’s 37.4 percent, an even wider margin than predicted by exit
polls that had given Sharon 59.5 percent. After Israeli television released
the results of the exit polls, Sharon’s supporters in Tel Aviv whistled,
clapped and blew horns, waving blue-and-white banners. “The end of Oslo!”
some shouted, referring to the interim peace accord that Sharon has always
opposed.
Sharon’s victory speech was characteristically tough and
uncompromising, NBC’s Martin Fletcher reported, but the Likud Party leader
did leave the door open to resume peace talks. Sharon said a peace agreement
“requires difficult compromises from both sides,” but did not say what
concessions he was willing to make.
Turning to the Palestinians, Sharon urged them to “to abandon the path
of violence and return to the path of dialogue and solving the problems
between us by peaceful means.”
However, he suggested that Jerusalem would be off-limits in future
negotiations. “The government I shall form will work to strengthen and build
the united Jerusalem, Israel’s capital and the capital of the Jewish people
for all eternity,” Sharon said.
Speaking of Jerusalem in his speech Wednesday, Sharon quoted a
biblical verse often cited to express Jewish ties to the city: “If I forget
thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand wither.”
The Palestinians want the traditionally Arab East Jerusalem as a
capital for a future Palestinian state. Barak had agreed to hand at least
some of the Arab neighborhoods over to Palestinian control, but the deal was
rejected by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Barak’s government fell
apart over his even making the offer. Several weeks later, a visit by Sharon
to a Jerusalem site holy to both Muslims and Jews sparked Palestinian riots,
the beginning of months of violence that became known as the “Al-Aqsa
intifada.”
The prospects for talks that exclude compromise on Jerusalem appeared
dim. After Sharon’s victory speech Palestinians’ chief negotiator Saeb
Erekat countered that any talks would have to resume where they broke off
under the Barak — meaning Sharon would have to adopt positions he has
bitterly opposed.
“We cannot go back to point zero,” Erekat said. That would be “a
recipe for war,” he added.
This first blush of rhetoric sketched out the gap — if not impasse —
that would have to be resolved before any progress can be made.
Opinion: A landslide of woe
POLITICAL UNCERTAINTY
Once complete election results are announced, within eight days,
Sharon will have 45 days to form a coalition government and get it approved
by Israel’s parliament, or Knesset. Because no lawmakers’ seats were at
stake, Sharon inherits the same sharply divided Knesset that Barak faced.
Barak will remain a caretaker prime
minister while Sharon works to form a government.
Many analysts say it could be just as difficult for Sharon to form a
stable government as it was for Barak — and that his term in office could be
even shorter than that of Barak, who governed less than two years.
Immediately after the first exit polls were announced, Sharon made an
offer to Barak to join in a national unity government. The right-wing and
religious parties do not form a solid majority in Israel’s fractured
parliament, and Sharon would need Labor support to form a stable government.
However, Barak announced Tuesday night that he would step down as
Labor Party leader, leaving Sharon without a negotiating partner in the rival
political camp. The move did open the way for a “national unity government,”
but it could take weeks or months for Labor to choose a new leader to set the
party’s course.
Sharon’s first hurdle will be the 2001 budget, which the Knesset must
pass by March 31. If the budget is not approved, new elections must be called
for prime minister and parliament.
BARAK STEPS BACK
Conceding the election had gone to Sharon, Barak told supporters late
Tuesday night: “The voters have spoken, and I respect their democratic
decision.”
His voice choked with emotion, Barak defended his efforts to
negotiate a final peace settlement. A crowd of several hundred supporters
shouted: “Thank you, Ehud!”
“Friends, we have lost a battle, but we will win the war,” said the
58-year-old former general. “Our path is the one and only path, the path that
will lead Israel to peace and security.”
As Barak finished speaking, his supporters began singing “A Song for
Peace,” an anthem of the Israeli peace movement. In 1995, Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated shortly after singing the song at a massive
peace rally in Tel Aviv. At his funeral, an aide read the lyrics of the song
off the bloodied piece of paper that Rabin had been carrying that night. For
many Israelis, the song came to symbolize the peace process that at its high
point saw Rabin and Arafat shaking hands on the White House lawn.
Barak’s announcement that he was stepping down as head of the Labor
Party, quitting parliament and leaving politics for a while surprised many
Israelis.
Many in the crowd of several hundred supporters, some waving Israeli
flags, chanted “Stay, Ehud, stay.”
Barak did not turn down Sharon’s offer for a unity government
outright, saying he understood the longing of the Israeli people for national
unity. However, he said Labor would agree to join a Sharon government only if
agreement could be reached on how to proceed in negotiations with the
Palestinians.
The only way toward peace and security for Israel, Barak said, was to
draw a border and separate from the Palestinians. “This true path requires
courage ... and it is possible that the public is not yet fully ready for the
painful truth that we have exposed,” Barak said.
“On the other side, the Palestinian side, there has not yet been found
the readiness to take this step that is difficult also for them,” he said.
Barak supporters were plunged into gloom. “It’s a disaster for
Israeli democracy and the Israeli people, because they totally want something
Sharon is unable to deliver,” said parliament member Yael Dayan.
February 6 — Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks with
MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski as voters cast their ballots for prime minister in
Israel.
For many Israelis, neither candidate was a satisfactory choice — and
the depth of that frustration was driven home by what election officials
called a historically low turnout, just over 60 percent. Traditionally,
Israel’s voting average is close to 80 percent, among the democratic world’s
highest.
Israeli Arabs, who account for 12.5 percent of the electorate and were
a key source of support for Barak in 1999 elections, stayed home in droves.
They were angry at Barak over the fatal shooting of 13 Israeli Arabs by
police during riots in October.
CAUTIOUS REACTION TO POLLS
Israel clamped an election-day closure on the West Bank and Gaza
Strip, where Palestinians have been under tight travel restrictions since the
start of ferocious clashes that are now in their fifth month.
Palestinians declared a “day of rage” to coincide with the Israeli
voting, and dozens of Palestinians were hurt in clashes with Israeli soldiers
in the West Bank, Palestinians said.
After Sharon’s apparent victory was reported on Israeli television, a
spokesman for Yasser Arafat said the Palestinian Authority was ready to deal
with the prime minister-elect.
“What concerns us is the commitment to the peace agreements we signed
with the Israeli governments,” Arafat’s adviser Nabil Abu Rdainah said.
But Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo described
Sharon’s election as “the most foolish event in Israel’s history.” He said
that Sharon’s hard-line policies would kill the peace process.
In the West Bank town of Ramallah, demonstrators burned pictures of
both Israeli candidates, but the harshest words were reserved for Sharon. One
of the protesters, a 61-year-old Palestinian woman named Masada Mousa, asked:
“Do you think any Palestinian expects the murderer Sharon to achieve peace?”
INSECURITY IN ISRAEL
For many Israelis, the driving force behind the choice was a sense of
insecurity spawned by months of fighting. Although the great majority of the
nearly 400 people killed have been Palestinians, Israelis have been badly
rattled by bombings, drive-by shootings, abductions and ambushes that are
seen as making increasing inroads into daily life.
And many Israelis simply could not stomach the fact that the outbreak
of violence came on the heels of the most sweeping concessions offered the
Palestinians by any Israeli leader: a state in 95 percent of the West Bank
and virtually all of Gaza, and control of Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem,
claimed by both sides as their capital.
During the brief campaign — begun after Barak resigned eight weeks ago
— the prime minister warned again and again that Sharon could plunge Israel
into all-out war with the Palestinians, or even ignite a regional
confrontation.
Sharon countered by saying that calm must be restored before any
meaningful dialogue could occur, and that Barak’s proffered concessions on
territory and Jerusalem went too far.
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